If one word could describe Germany during the immediate aftermath of World
War I, it would be "starvation." And yet, while some 900,000 German men,
women and children were starving to death, the American and British public
knew nothing about the reason for this holocaust, deliberately caused by the
continuation of a wartime British naval blockade.

Britain's post-war naval blockade of food to Germany in 1919 matched the
then current blockade of news by the American and British press. Even today,
only a
few non-Germans know the truth, and American and British historians, for the
most part, have participated in the coverup of this most appalling crime.

The guilt of the world press in covering up the atrocity is compounded by the
fact that the American and British public were told of the starvation itself, but
were kept ignorant of the criminal policies of the Allies which produced it.

Newspapers carried stories of relief efforts to rescue the starving. The most
famed of these efforts was directed by Herbert Hoover, later to become the
31st president.

As told by Otto Friedrich in Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the
1920s, John Maynard Keynes cited the testimony of an observer who
accompanied Herbert Hoover's mission to help the starving:

You think [this] is a kindergarten for the little ones. No, these are
children of seven and eight years. Tiny faces, with large, dull eyes,
overshadowed by huge puffed, rickety foreheads, their small arms just skin and
bones, and above the crooked legs with their dislocated joints the swollen,
pointed stomachs of the hunger
edema... "You see this child here," the physician in charge explained, "it
consumed an incredible amount of bread, and yet it did not get any stronger. I
found out that it hid all the bread it received underneath its straw mattress. The
fear of hunger was so deeply rooted in the child that it collected the stores
instead of eating the food: a misguided animal instinct made the dread of
hunger worse than the actual pangs."

Meanwhile, the armistice terms dictated by the Allies at Versailles would
assure that Germany could not recover economically even to the point of
providing a subsistence livelihood for the majority of its citizens.

France was to get Alsace-Lorraine outright; she would occupy all German
territory west of the Rhine for 15 years and she would take possession of the
rich coal mines of the Saar district, which was to be governed by the League of
Nations. Poland would get the important industrial region of Upper Silesia,
most of Posen Province and West Prussia, thus establishing a "Polish Corridor"
to the sea and cutting off East Prussia from the rest of Germany.

Elderly German women
search through piles of garbage for something to eat in Berlin in
1919.

If Germany did not sign, the Allies were ready to invade and occupy the
country. After a number of resignations, the German government at Weimar
agreed to
the "unheard-of injustice" of the Treaty of Versailles.1

Immediately following the war, Germany was wracked with insurgencies,
coups
and counter-coups. The Bolsheviks attempted a takeover similar to the
revolution in Russia. The Allies, meeting in Versailles, celebrated the unrest
and destruction. And the
people - particularly the American
people - were kept in the dark about the continuing blockade.

Communist agents, sent by the Bolshevik regime in the fledgling USSR, were
fomenting revolutions throughout the prostrate country. As Gen. Leon Degrelle
points out in his Hitler: Born at Versailles:

While the murder of defenseless civilians was carried out in
Bavaria, the delegates at the Paris Peace Conference had their first meeting.
Far from being horrified at such massacres, the Allies could not contain their
glee. The Bavarian bloodbath was a gift from the gods, which meant that
Germany would be split and more Germans would be killed. Allied diplomatic
envoys were rushed to Munich to kowtow to the bloodthirsty trio [three agents
sent by V. I. Lenin named Levine, Levien and Axelrod]. They offered food and
money to bolster their opposition to Berlin.2

And then, Degrelle says what few historians will admit: "Although the war had
ended, Germany was still under Allied blockade [editor's emphasis],
which was ruthlessly enforced. The first state of Germany to benefit from a
lifting of the blockade would
be communist-controlled Bavaria."3

One must search diligently for historical references to the continued,
devastating blockade. And when mention is found, it is usually just
that - a mere mention. Diether Raff confirms
the peace-time blockade in his A History of
Germany - From the Medieval Empire to the Present:

"The Allied peace terms turned out to be extremely severe, far exceeding the
worst fears of the German government... The peace treaties of Brest-Litovsk
and Bucharest were declared invalid and the food blockade around Germany
was to continue... Thus Germany's capitulation was accomplished and an end
set to four years of enormous bloodshed."4

The effectiveness of the blockade, initiated years before the entry of the United
States into the war, and which led to the sinking of the Lusitania,5 has been well documented.

"It was the blockade that finally drove the Central Powers to accept defeat,"
says Richard Hoveth in his study of the struggle on the high seas during World
War 1.6 "At first mild in its application, the
blockade's noose gradually tightened until, with the American entry, all
restraint was cast aside. Increasingly deprived of the means to wage war, or
even to feed her population, the violent response was insurrection; apathy and
demoralization the mute consequence of dashed hopes and thin potato
soup."7

Basil Liddell Hart is quoted by Hoveth to the effect that, revolution and
internal unrest notwithstanding, the blockade was "clearly the decisive agency
in the struggle."8

Berliners exchange potato
peelings for firewood. As the grip of the Allied blockade tightened, waste
materials became valuable commodities to be processed and reused.

The Marshall Cavendish Encyclopedia has two poignant photos taken in
Germany during the final year of the war. In one, Berliners exchange potato
peelings for firewood. "As the grip of the Allied blockade tightened, waste
materials became valuable commodities to be processed and reused."9 Another photo shows a large crowd
of people at an outdoor soup kitchen with the caption: "Berliners crowd 'round
a mobile municipal kitchen for a cheap
meal - hot dinners, 35 pfennigs a portion.'"10

The Allies clearly intended to starve the German people to death,
foreshadowing the Morgenthau Plan of the latter days of World War
II - a plan that actually went into operation to starve and exterminate one third
of the German population.

After confiscating the German merchant navy, the Allies proceeded to
confiscate German private property all over the world, contrary to all precedent
from previous wars when private property had been held in escrow until the
ratification of peace treaties, when it would revert to its legitimate owners.

Degrelle writes: "The Allied powers reserve the right to keep or dispose of
assets belonging to German citizens, including companies they control [Article
167 B]. This wholesale expropriation would take place without any
compensation to the owners [Articles 121 and 279 B]."11

And, Germany remained responsible for the liabilities and loans on the assets
that were taken from them. Profits, however, remained in the hands of the
Allies. Thus, private German property and assets were confiscated in China
(Articles 129 and 132), Thailand
(Articles 135-137), Egypt (Article 148),
Liberia (Articles 135-140) and in many other countries.12

Germany was also precluded from investing capital in any neighboring country
and had to forfeit all rights "to whatever title it may possess in these
countries."13

The Allies were given free access to the German marketplace without the
slightest tariff while products made in Germany faced high foreign tariff
barriers. Articles 264 to 267 established that Germany "undertakes to give the
Allies and their associates the status of most favored nations for five years."14 Germany, of course, had no such
equal status.

Germany was experiencing near famine conditions. It was at this moment the
Allies decided to confiscate a substantial part of what was left of Germany's
livestock. The American representative at Versailles, Thomas Lamont,
recorded the event with some indignation:

"The Germans were made to deliver cattle, horses, sheep, goats, etc.,... A
strong protest came from Germany when dairy cows were taken to France and
Belgium, thus depriving German children of milk."15

Food shortages were such that 60,000 Ruhr miners refused to work overtime
unless they were paid, even in the form of butter. When it became obvious that
Germany would not be able to deliver the coal ordered by the treaty, the Allies
lowered the amount from 43 million tons to 20 million tons.

Degrelle points out that the virtual confiscation of German coal production led
to the deaths of German children for lack of fuel for heat.

John Williams, in the epilogue of his story about the war on the home front,
has this one sentence: "In Germany... still subject to the blockade, blank
misery prevailed."16

In his biography of Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Walworth says that the British
command in Germany reported that food shortages raised a specter of
anarchy.

"Herbert Hoover, who had gone abroad after the armistice eager to use
American surpluses to feed the hungry of Europe, soon had found that the
idealistic professions of individuals at London and Paris did not square with
their actions as officials of electorates that were swayed by war hatred and
economic necessity. Shipments had been delivered to Allies and to neutrals,
but British officials had refused to break their blockade to let cargoes go into
Germany. Moreover, Germany had failed to act on an agreement to turn over
merchant ships before receiving food [eventually forced on the Weimar
government. -Ed.] and showed no desire to pay for shipments in
gold - a possibility that French financiers were thought to be opposing so that
their nation might get what gold there was as indemnity."17

There is evidence that Wilson actually thought the European powers would
accept his "14 Points" and
feed starving Germans now that the war was over.
But, of course, that was not the case as discovered by Wilson's humanitarian
point man, Hoover. England's Lloyd George, meanwhile, thought that the
starvation was being ameliorated. He
favored - although quietly - feeding his ex-enemy.

"Frustrated by apathy and obstruction, Hoover was brought on the carpet by
[British Prime Minister] Lloyd George, who was inclined to brush him off as
'that Salvation Army man.' The prime minister, distressed by reports of famine
in Germany, wanted to know why Hoover had not done his job. At this the
American let him have the bitter truth. Lloyd George, feeling that tact was not
one of Hoover's great qualities, asked him to give the council an expurgated
version of his remarks. This was done, and a stormy and wordy session
ensued."18

The food blockade was not terminated until July 12, 1919. On May 7 of that
year, Count
von Brockdorf-Rantzau had indignantly referred to this fact in addressing the
Versailles assembly. "The hundreds of thousands of noncombatants," the
German chief delegate had stated, "who have perished since November 11,
1918, as a result of the blockade, were killed with cold deliberation, after our
enemies had been assured of their complete victory."19

The murderous Allied blockade, which continued for eight months after the
end of the war, was one reason why a German war veteran who decided to go
into politics a decade later was able to revive the seared memory of a German
nation which had suffered greatly and vault himself to absolute power. His
name, of course, was Adolf Hitler.

Notes:

1Friedrich, Otto,
Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s. New York:
Harper & Row, 1972. ...back...